By Robert Albro, Associate Director, CLALS

On June 26th, recently fired Bolivian general Juan José Zúñiga attempted an ill-conceived coup supposedly in the name of “restoring democracy.” If coups were once a fact of life in Latin America, that is no longer the case. Yet, this short-lived failed attempt highlights a brewing institutional crisis in Bolivia: growing improvisation and confusion around the institutionalized transfer of power through elections, and declining public confidence in the results. The origins of this crisis can be traced to efforts by Evo Morales, head of the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party and long-time president, to remain in power, and the perceived illegitimacy of the judiciary, as it has been caught up in the politics of these efforts. 

Zúñiga’s attempted coup consisted of ramming the door of the traditional presidential palace, located in the historic Plaza Murillo in the capital city of La Paz, with an armored vehicle. The poorly executed coup attempt lasted all of three hours, appeared to have no political support, and ended when Bolivia’s president Luis Arce personally confronted Zúñiga inside the palace and ordered him to withdraw. Soon thereafter, Zúñiga was under arrest, and Arce thanked Bolivians for helping to thwart the coup amid cheering supporters while insisting that “democracy must be respected.” In the days following dozens of identified “coup plotters” have also been arrested.

The coup attempt received broad international condemnation. And initially Bolivian politicians across the spectrum rejected the attempted mutiny. This included Morales, ex-president turned bitter rival of Arce, who decried any attempt by the armed forces to “violate democracy.” It also included members of Bolivia’s fragmented opposition, such as imprisoned caretaker president Jeanine Añez, who tweeted that Bolivians will “defend democracy.” The attempt was likewise immediately condemned by the country’s powerful union movements, with the Unified Syndical Confederation of Rural Workers of Bolivia (CSUTCB) declaring a strike in opposition. 

However, evident unity regarding the need to defend Bolivian democracy quickly gave way to a much stranger fog of contradictory accounts. Once in custody, Zúñiga – previously known as a stalwart Arce loyalist – insisted that Arce had ordered the coup attempt as a ruse to bolster his flagging popularity. The beleaguered president’s approval ratings have gone into freefall amid a worsening economic crisis caused by dwindling foreign reserves, declining gas exports, fuel and dollar shortages, and the specter of inflation, provoking rounds of protests and strikes. 

Morales amplified the “self-coup” theory on his radio program, a claim that the ex-president’s supporters have seized on and perpetuated. Argentina’s president Javier Milei echoed the charge. The fact that Bolivian political analysts have taken Zúñiga’s story seriously points to a deeper distrust, shared by many ordinary Bolivians, of the country’s political and military authorities. Such distrust is partly a result of the unresolved circumstances and resulting enmities around Morales’s ouster in 2019, under military pressure, and ongoing heated national and international debate about whether those events constituted electoral fraud or a coup. Scholars still can’t agree. 

The question of whether a coup – a sudden, overt, unlawful, and often violent seizure of power – has occurred is seldom a source of confusion. But both in 2019 and in 2024 in Bolivia, whether a “coup,” “self-coup,” or something else, took place have been questions of ongoing fierce and partisan debate and wellsprings for conspiracy theories. The mystery around Zúñiga’s actions led Bolivia’s minister of government to hold a press conference to take reporters through the failed coup step by step, with diagrams. And yet, many ordinary Bolivians don’t know who or what to believe.

Growing doubt around transitions of power can be traced at least to 2016, when Morales ignored the result of a national referendum he himself had called that rejected his intention to stand for a third term, despite being constitutionally limited to two. Then followed the confusion and conflicting narratives around 2019’s election results, Morales’s exit, and subsequent partisan violence and security crackdown. Añez’s caretaker government then compounded a perception of illegitimacy by repeatedly delaying new elections while going after MAS opponents. 

If Arce’s 2020 election was without major controversy, last month’s failed coup – if that is what it was – has become additional fuel in a rancorous and personalistic rivalry between Arce and Morales for control over the MAS. The lead-up to 2025 has seen MAS loyalists divided into hostile camps that threaten to fracture the once dominant party. Perhaps more importantly, who gets to claim party leadership has become a legal squabble, with Morales attempting to throw the president out of the party, competing party congresses, and courts weighing in to determine the legitimate leader. It is increasingly likely that whoever runs for president on the MAS ticket will also be an internally contested candidate. 

Finally, during the second half of his presidency, and not entirely without justification, Morales was accused by opponents of stacking the judiciary. This appeared to pay off in 2017 when the country’s electoral court ruled that, despite term limits, Morales could run in 2019 because doing so was a “human right.” In turn, this decision was overturned in late 2023 by the same court, a ruling Morales has rejected while he continues to run. But that tribunal is viewed by many as illegitimate, since its members previously delayed constitutionally mandated judicial elections and reappointed themselves indefinitely, before issuing a string of rulings in the Arce government’s favor. Both rivals are perceived as trying to manipulate the courts to decide the outcome of their personal political contest to control the MAS and emerge as the party’s anointed presidential candidate. 

As the 2025 elections loom, Bolivia seems to be playing out its own post-truth political drama, characterized by increasingly frequent disruptions of, confusion around, and conflicts over, the institutionalized transfer of power through elections, which is not good news for public confidence in the country’s political and electoral institutions.